North Texas home sales up 10 percent in February

North Texas home sales rose 10 percent in February from a year earlier, an increase that came even with higher mortgage costs and record home prices.

Real estate agents sold 7,188 preowned single-family homes last month. That was the highest February sales total ever in North Texas, according to data from the Real Estate Center at Texas A&M University and North Texas Real Estate Information Systems.

For the first two months of 2018, real estate agents sold 7 percent more houses than in the same period of 2017.

The biggest increase in sales so far this year was in homes priced between $200,000 and $250,000.

"The shortage of available housing under $250,000 is acute in D-FW," said housing analyst Ted Wilson of Residential Strategies. "This is the part of the market that is experiencing the biggest year-over-year price gains.

"Most builders have a hard time producing housing much under $250,000, so prospective buyers have to turn to the preowned market," he said. "The leading edge of the millennial demographic is entering its first-time homebuyer years, so we see no letting up of demand in this price channel."

At the same time, sales of million-dollar homes are down 7 percent so far in 2018.

In February, the median price of homes sold by local real estate agents was $248,000 — up 6 percent from a year earlier.

More than 17,500 houses were listed for sale in the real estate agents’ multiple listing service. That’s 6 percent more than at this time in 2017 and equals a two-month supply at current sales rates.

On average, it took 52 days to sell the houses that traded in February.

In 2018, a record of more than 106,000 homes have been sold in the more than two dozen North Texas counties included in the monthly survey.

The D-FW area accounted for almost a third of all home sales in Texas and more than any other of the state’s major metro areas.